


Antiphony

by Kholran



Series: Spin Me a Tale [6]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asexual Character, Blind Character, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 06:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3370775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kholran/pseuds/Kholran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not a date.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Antiphony

**Author's Note:**

> Antiphony: Alternate singing by a chorus in two divisions.

“Da? What’s this?”

Bard shook the water out of his hair and pulled on a pair of jeans before poking his head out of the bathroom. “What’s what, darlin’?”

“This.” Sigrid held Thranduil’s business card, complete with a note about the place and time they’d agreed to meet on the back, in her hand and was looking at him curiously. 

“Oh. I told you I was going out for a while tonight, remember?” He disappeared long enough to grab his towel and wrap it around his shoulders before moving off to his bedroom, Sigrid trailing behind.

“Yeah, but I thought you meant with people from work. You didn’t say you were meeting him,” she pointed out as he crouched down to rifle through the bottom drawer of his bureau for a shirt.

“I didn’t think it was important. Why is it important? How do you even know who ‘him’ is?” Bard paused  in his search to look over his shoulder at his eldest daughter.

Sigrid looked at him as if he’d been living under a rock, and the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. “Everyone knows that name. His son goes to our school and he runs one of the biggest companies in the city.”

“There was a ‘duh’ at the end of that, wasn’t there?” One corner of his mouth pulled into a lopsided smile and he returned to his task. He really should try to be more organized. He also needed to do his laundry.

~*~

“Tauriel’s coming over to watch a movie. Do you want…” Legolas’ voice stopped in the open door of his bedroom. “Are you going somewhere?”

Thranduil had been standing in front of his wardrobe for the last ten minutes, trying to decide what to change into. He could have just stayed in his work clothes but a suit seemed entirely too formal for meeting someone in a bar, even if it was a nice one. “I’m meeting a friend…acquaintance…for a few drinks,” he replied, running his fingers over his choices in the blue shirt section before moving on to grey.

“Does this have anything to do with where you go every Saturday?”

There was a faint trace of accusation in his son’s tone, and Thranduil knew instantly he was going to have to tread very carefully. It was exactly why he hadn’t mentioned this outing sooner. Legolas had been so close to his mother, and had taken the loss so hard. Any hint that Thranduil might have thoughts of moving on with someone else could ruin the relationship they’d spent so long rebuilding.

Not that he thought of Bard that way, because this wasn’t a date, and he wasn’t looking for a relationship, and he’d already made that perfectly clear. Except that his subconscious didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. “It does. There’s a storyteller in the park on Saturdays. A good one. I’ve been stopping to listen. Long story short, I paid for a cup of coffee once, and he wants to pay me back. That’s all it is.”

Thranduil could hear the skepticism.

“So…this isn’t-”

~*~

“-a date?”

Bard shut the bureau drawer with more force than he’d intended and nearly slammed it on his fingers in the process.

“Because it would be okay, you know. If it was,” Sigrid continued, sitting herself down on the edge of his bed and pushing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. She hesitated before continuing, considering her words carefully as she always did. “Finding someone else doesn’t mean you didn’t love mum. As long as it makes you happy now.”

Bard pulled the shirt he’d chosen over his head and sat down beside his daughter. “Even if that someone else isn’t a ‘she’?” He’d always known about that part of himself, but it wasn’t something he’d entertained since meeting his wife, and certainly not something he’d ever discussed with his children.

“I don’t think you really get to choose that.” She reached out and took his hand, smiling up at him.

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “When did you get so smart?”

Sigrid laughed, and gave the hand in hers a soft squeeze. “I’ve _always_ been smart.”

“Good. Don’t stop being smart. But this is-”

~*~

“-absolutely not a date.” Thranduil made his decision, pulling a grey sweater over the white button-down he was already wearing.

“Then why didn’t you say anything? Since when do you need to keep a social engagement a secret?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I should have told you I was going out.” He closed his wardrobe doors and turned to face Legolas. “I just didn’t want to admit you had also been right in forcing me to leave the house. It’s embarrassing when my son is smarter than I am.”

Legolas huffed a soft laugh and then let Thranduil pull him into a brief embrace. It ended when Tauriel called her arrival from the hallway downstairs- she never bothered to knock anymore when she’d been invited- and he released his son to go and greet her. Thranduil followed shortly after, patting his pockets to make sure he was still carrying both his wallet and his phone.

~*~

Bard stopped to say goodbye to Tilda and Bain, then made one more check with Sigrid that she knew where all the emergency numbers were. She reminded him that she watched her siblings all the time and practically had those numbers memorized. Sigrid followed him to the door, grinning cheekily before calling out after him. “Have fun on your date!”

~*~

“Tauriel. Can I expect you for breakfast tomorrow?” Thranduil asked, knowing how often she spent Friday nights in their house.

“Only if I get waffles out of it,” she joked in return, and then paused. “Hot date tonight?”

~*~

And in the sort of cosmic coincidence that some might call fate, Bard and Thranduil both uttered the exact same words at the exact same moment.

“ _It’s not a date._ ”


End file.
